Patty grew up in a New Deal household. Chuck’s father, after voting for Al Smith, voted for every winning presidential candidate for the next 40 years.

Right now our worst fear about the Republicans has come true. This is not a fight about the Affordable Care Act. It is a fight to destroy the government and drag the country back to the 19th century.

The Know Nothings of the 1850s were opposed to Irish immigration. They did not want Irish-American Catholics in this country: “No Irish need apply.”

Later our doors were closed to Asians: “The Yellow Peril.” Even FDR went along with the bigotry of the times and refused to admit Jews trying to flee Nazi Germany, and he allowed Japanese-Americans to be rounded up and imprisoned.

After the Civil War, the U.S. Constitution gave former slaves full citizenship and the right to vote. As soon as Reconstruction ended, southern whites denied blacks that right. It was not until the 1950s that blacks’ right to vote was assured by federal law. Today with the blessing of the Republican-dominated Supreme Court, many Republican-controlled states are trying to again deny blacks the right to vote.

This is bigotry.

From FDR to the election of Reagan, the rights, working conditions and salaries of working people in this country were improving. Beginning with Reagan, there has been a relentless attack on the rights of all working Americans.

The goal of the Republican Party over time is becoming more and more clear. When they say workers make too much money, they mean that our wages are not comparable to Chinese wages. When the Republicans complain that environmental laws stifle business creativity, they mean that America should have the same environmental regulations as China — none.

When they say that our teachers are overpaid, when they support vouchers and charter schools, they are attempting to destroy public education. After all, the rich, who finance the Tea Party, send their children to private or to wealthy suburban schools. When they defund four-year state universities and say, “Send your kid to a tech school or the community college or do a MOOC,” what they’re saying is that universities are only for their kids.

They brag that they want to repeal the 17th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and when they gerrymander district after district across the country it’s obvious that they are anti-democratic.

When they work to end all abortions, they’re only reminding us that they want women, including white women, to remember that their place is subservient to men.

Page 2 of 2 - We’ve seen who they are and we understand what they want — they want to bring down the government.

Here are only two examples of the wacko mentality at work: The belief that “we need our guns to protect us from the government” and the fact that there is at least one state, Texas, that wants to secede from the U.S., and parts of three other states that want to secede from their state.

America in the 21st century is complicated, complex and multicultural with people from every continent, every race, ethnic group, and religious background, wearing different clothes and speaking dozens of languages. Perhaps it’s all too sophisticated for the Tea Party mind.

In the long run, the radical Republicans can wound the government, but they won’t bring it down. The country is not going to move backward.